Friday, January 2, 2009

Kung Fool

One of my favorite Chinese sayings is: 大智若愚 (da4 zhi4 ruo4 yu2), which basically means "very wise people appear to be fools." I like it because sometimes I do dumb things, and then I can say that to myself to feel better.

It is actually part of a larger saying: 大勇若怯，大智若愚 (da4 yong3 ruo4 qie4, da4 zhi4 ruo4 yu2) "A great hero may appear timid, the wise may appear foolish." So it is saying that people with great talent or great characteristics are often not recognized for what they are.

"Of any three people I walk with, one will be my teacher.I can learn from their good characteristics,And I can change myself by noticing their faults."

(Or as we liked to joke in grad school: 三人喝，必有我醉。(san3 ren2 he1, bi4 you3 wo3 zui4). "Of any three people I drink with, I will definitely get drunk.")

The point being that you can learn from eveyone you meet in some way or another, so it does not pay to pretend you know everything. Hence, you may appear to be dumb if you are actually listening to say, the Information Technology person at work talk about opening and closing Microsoft Word, BUT she might say something you don't know such as "The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds," which you would not catch if you just said "I know" and left the meeting.

Another word besides "愚 yu4" for "dumb," or "idiot" include this one, which caused me some grief at first, but now I embrace it: 笨 (ben4). Yep, my first name in Chinese means dummy. But, that's OK. As a kid I called myself Benjy, which would equate to 笨妓, ben4 ji4, or "dumb prostitute." Naughty cross-translations are always good for a laugh at parties. And if the truly wise appear as fools, then surely those who appear (via their name) as "dumb prostitutes" are practically omniscient, no?

No comments:

About Me

I'm a 30-something writer/editor, currently living in Colorado. Here are some of my adventures, coming from the perspective an American who lived in China, between 1994-1999.
NOTE: If you can't read the characters in the posts, try switching the Encoding (under Page in IE, or View in Firefox) to Unicode.